Systematic Theology (part 1)

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Systematic Theology (part 2) [Bibliology]

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How's everyone this morning? Cold, compared to the rest of the winter.
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Any New Year resolutions, anyone? Well, we'll find out if you have made some implicit resolutions through this class.
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You know, one of the things Pastor Mike always tells us is, you know, New Year resolutions, don't make them because a few weeks later, you're just going to regret having made them.
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There is a lot of excitement beginning of the year. We want to start something, you know, do something we haven't done.
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There's a lot of people doing things. And then soon, the excitement fizzles out.
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Life comes back to normal. And then, you know, things drop off. I want to tell you guys, as we begin, last year was the first year
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I had somewhat of a resolution that I began and actually ended up keeping. It was a workout, diet thing, which
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I never, I mean, how many of you drink the green liquid stuff that's good for you? OK, we have some warriors here.
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And there are things in our life that we care deeply enough about that doesn't matter what it looks like, doesn't matter what it tastes like, we can keep drinking it.
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And after a while, do you like what you drink? Of course. You know, it becomes a part of your habit, the way you live your life.
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And then, it just permeates the things that you do. And then, it doesn't become a resolution. It just becomes a part of the exciting things in life that's part of who you are and what you do.
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Today, we're going to be starting, we call it Adventures in Theology. It's really systematic theology in the sense that we're going to be looking at some of the grand schemes of what we can learn about God and how this would be useful in our lives.
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But this is going to be different than a typical IBS class, where we have lots of content you need to study and then just pass an exam.
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This is going to be more of looking at these questions from the perspective of how can
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I worship God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength. So if some of you are thinking this year in terms of resolutions,
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I want my devotions to be deeper. I want to have a glimpse of God as who he is from the pages of scripture so I can just meditate upon his characteristics so I can actually be in his presence and enjoy him.
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This may be a good place to start. But what is theology? Can someone define the word theology?
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Yeah, pick those two words apart, theos and logos. It is the study or an understanding of God.
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And where does theology come from? Today, if you look at theology, there's all kinds of theology. But where should theology come from?
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From the word of God. So it is God who has revealed himself to us through the word.
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And we're going to use that in order to unpack and fill this out. But I call this systematic theology.
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Now, why systematic? Why not random theology, haphazard theology?
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What's the difference, you think, between systematic and non -systematic?
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Excellent. This is, I think, just two ways of presenting what systematic ought to look like. Firstly, picking up from Charlie's definition, actually, let me just read something to you if you want to take it down.
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You could say, what does the whole Bible teach us today? That would be one simple way of calling systematic theology.
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And the way Charlie put this out is, many of us read the Bible. So as we read the Bible, we understand something about God, maybe his goodness.
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There may be something in the Psalms you read, and then you just meditate on it. You read something in the
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Gospel of John, and then you meditate on it. Now, how nice would it be if you could just find everything that the
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Bible talks about the goodness of God in terms of his attribute? Just pull them all together and then look at it in terms of, here is the systematic teaching, the coherent, the wholesome teaching on this particular attribute.
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Or we take all the attributes together. We step back a little bit more and say, here are all the various attributes of God.
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How can we look at who God is in terms of his communicable attributes, things that we can actually experience, some of these attributes that he has made us in his image, and some of the incommunicable attributes, things in which
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God is so different and far apart from us? And so when you are planning to have your devotions this year, you can actually say, here are some things about God that I haven't actually sat down and meditated upon.
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And I can have a systematic or an overview from the Bible, and you will have various scriptures to which to go to in terms of filling your mind with regards to who
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God is. Now, when I said theology, the study of God in terms of his attributes, who
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God is, is called theology proper. We're going to be spending a lot of time on that, just understanding who
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God is and his richness. But in a more broader sense, it covers everything that God has to tell us through the word.
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So we're going to be looking at various aspects, beginning with the word of God, looking at the nature of God himself, who is
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Jesus Christ, who is the Holy Spirit, how does he work, what is the role of the church, what are we doing in the church, so what does
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God expect of us in the church, and maybe going all the way up until the second coming, when
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Christ comes back, what is it that is going to happen? What does the word of God say about Christ coming back and then eternity, heaven, living in the presence of God forever?
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So that's the big picture. Now, in terms of theology, but let's talk in terms of application.
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Because when you begin a new year, one of the things that many of us want to do as Christians is have a good devotion.
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But now let's look at it in terms of your daily life. How many of you are very excited for 2016?
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Can you tell us what are some of the things you are really excited for? That's a great, great answer, to grow in maturity in Christ.
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And I think it ought to be the explicit desire of every
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Christian. We want to grow in depth in our Christ -likeness to be made more and more like him in this coming year.
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And some of us would intentionally go about it. Do you have any plans how you want to grow in maturity this year?
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Excellent. Well, one of the things was you positively look to do some things that God has commanded you to, or told you to, in order to grow in Christ -likeness.
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And one of those things you just mentioned is meditation. So you want to study the word and dwell upon it.
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And so one of the things in this class we're going to do is try to give you various snapshots that will give you things to meditate upon, to look into, and give you that systematic, the comprehensive overview of the things of God that are good for our minds to dwell upon.
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But then the second thing you mentioned, in terms of sanctification, how many of you, when you look back at this past year, could say, here are some areas in my life where they seem to miss the mark, things that I know in my character, in my walk as a
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Christian. If someone just wakes me up at night and calls me out, my response is not going to be the one that pleases
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God, but it is going to be dishonoring. Do you guys do that? End of the year, look back and say, here are things in my life that I'm thankful for, and here are things in my life that I need to grow in.
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And so there are going to be things in our life. And systematic theology, we're going to be looking at sanctification. How do
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Christians become more and more like Christ? What are ways in which we ought to apply ourselves in those areas where we fail?
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And one of the things that we're going to be seeing is trials, because the
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Lord brings trials into our lives to actually expose those areas where we may not even recognize them.
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The Holy Spirit will be using those events to trigger and open our eyes and say, here are things that you need to grow in to reflect the beauty of Christ and the grandeur of Christ.
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So we're going to be learning some of those things as well as we look at challenges in our personal walk.
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Now let's maybe expand things a little bit bigger. How about things in the world?
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ISIS, crisis with ISIS, or rainbows everywhere. Does theology have anything to do with homosexual challenges in the culture?
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How can theology help you in dealing with the culture wars that you're going to be facing in this new year?
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So let's take one specific example. Let's take homosexuality. How do you think that you can be a better Christian in responding to those challenges when you take one specific issue, like let's say homosexuality?
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How can you respond as a more godly Christian? And I'm deliberately saying this because my charge today is just an overview, but starting next week,
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I'm going to be challenging you on some of those things that you may have the right conclusions on, but you may not really know how you've gotten there.
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So let's just use this as an example. Homosexuality, go ahead. Excellent, and actually that's the kind of answer
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I was looking for, because when you look at systematic theology, you're not going to be looking at just one aspect of what the
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Bible says, but you're going to be looking at the wholesome picture, the comprehensive view. So in this particular case, when you know that it's a clear issue that is contrary to the word of God, that the culture as a whole has rejected, you want to be looking at the truth of how
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God sees this particular issue and the truth of how God expects you to respond to the person who is flawed in their thinking.
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So you want to be able to speak the truth, not compromising what
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God says, but you want to be able to say it in love. And so you not only look at the content, but also the method.
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How is it that you're going to be applying it? And the more you study the word and you understand how God relates to people, to unbelievers today, and the more it fills your mind, the more it is going to equip you in terms of how you live things out.
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In fact, on the top, I have this question, some of the definitions. Systematic theology, we just saw, what does the whole
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Bible teach us? And we're going to be looking at doctrines. Doctrines, a definition of doctrine would be what does the whole
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Bible teach us about a specific topic? Theology is the bigger study, and we are going to be looking at doctrines, different areas.
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What does the Bible say about these individual issues? But then I have the third thing there called a relation to ethics, because theology is going to teach us how to think about things that God has revealed to us.
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And ethics is going to teach us how to live those things out. So if your theology is correct,
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Pastor Mike says this very often. If your theology is right, then what are the two things that follow from your theology?
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Perfect. So if your theology is correct, your methodology, the way you live your life, which is the ethical side of life, would be correct.
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And the last part would be doxology. This would bring glory to God. So you need to begin with the right understanding of who
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God is, what he has taught us, revealed to us, and that will have an impact on the way you live your life and that right living before God and before your fellow men will bring glory to God as well.
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Now let's maybe take a few minutes to look at some of the other subjects here.
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So how does theology relate, for example, to exegesis? What is the relationship between theology and exegesis?
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What is exegesis? Yes. Okay. And that's actually where I was going.
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So exegesis is supposed to bring out, exegete, to bring out of the text the meaning of what
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God has said in the word. Whereas very often people, when we read the Bible, can tend to say, okay,
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I think this is true. And therefore, when I'm reading something, I can exegete or put into the text the meaning that I want.
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And one of the things with theology that you need to be very careful about is, I think Pastor Steve in his email wrote this, you can either be a good theologian or a bad theologian.
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And theology is this whole framework, this comprehensive view of understanding what
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God has said. And if your theology is bad to begin with, I remember my theology was very bad in a lot of areas and I didn't know about it because if I knew it,
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I would have not held to it. But because I held to the bad theology, one of the problems
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I had was when I would read the Bible, I would put my theology into the text.
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So if I read something and I don't like it, I would say, oh, this must mean this instead.
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That's because it fits my theology, it fits the way I want to think about the text.
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And if all of us are honest, there are gonna be areas in our lives which we don't know yet where our theology is flawed.
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And one of the challenges that we will have to face is to let the washing of the word, let the exegesis continually inform and shape the way we think.
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So our theology must be always fed by the study of the word and not the other way around.
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Because the temptation to all of us, many of you here, as I see faces, you've been coming to BBC for a long time, you know certain aspects of theology very deeply and correctly also.
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And knowing that, and even for myself, I can be tempted to say, well,
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I can, I've reached, reached whatever standard, oh,
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I'm a doctor. So that should be good enough for me to stay on this. And the honest truth is, till we are glorified, none of us will have our theology 100 % right, when we need to be very careful to always let the word of God inform and shape and correct us.
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And I think, was it Luther who said, always reforming? We need to always be careful to let the word of God be the ultimate standard and not our theological system be the grand standard from which to view the word of God.
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All right, so that's exegesis. How about, how about apologetics?
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What do you think, how do you think theology relates to apologetics? What is apologetics?
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Yes, so apologetics is to give a defense for the hope that you have. And this is typically given towards unbelievers.
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And if you want to present the truth to those who do not know the truth, how can you do it well if you do not actually understand what you believe in its wholesomeness?
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In fact, I think one of the challenges in apologetics that I faced in my early days was most people wanted to be great philosophers in terms of understanding how to break the reasons or present very strong arguments to unbelievers, but not being very strongly grounded in the word, not having a strong theology actually doesn't do a good job in presenting the gospel, in presenting the truth, in presenting what the unbeliever needs to hear just because your theology is not strong to begin with.
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In fact, some of the apologists that I look at their writings, I feel like they probably should just back off because they are trying to convince the unbeliever, but starting with the wrong base in teaching them.
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All right, so now let me ask this question. Why should we study theology? And I'm gonna give you an answer to start with.
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The answer is because there is bad theology out there.
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There's bad theology out there. So how many of you know open theism, what it means? All right, so can someone just explain what open theism is?
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Okay, so I think they would, did you want to add something?
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Yeah, so when it comes to the knowledge of God, that God's is really there is,
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God is not, he's not less than omniscient, but his omniscience doesn't include things that you haven't yet decided what you're gonna do.
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So future contingent events, God cannot know. And that doesn't go contrary to the word of God or so the open theist would say.
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So when you get not just something as a blatant rejection of a biblical truth, the
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Bible says, God is all powerful. And this heretic comes and says, God is not all powerful. It's very easy, you can just find all the scriptures.
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Now someone comes and says, well, God is all knowing, but what he knows is what can be known.
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You know, the things that you think God should know just can't be known at all. How would you respond to someone?
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So now that I've defined an open theist, what should be the right response for, of a Christian to an open theist?
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What biblical response, what theological response would we give? Maybe I went a little too far.
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Yeah, go ahead, Charlie. Yes, and I think there is thousands of verses like that, that you can actually put together, pull out, and then demonstrate that this is actually, you know, they're trying to come from a philosophical standpoint and try to charge that this is a wrong conception of God that you have drawn from the
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Bible. And our response should always come back from the Bible and say, no, there is a theological response.
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Here are the scriptures. Here you can, there's plenty of verses. I like Psalm 139 talking about how God knows things before even
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I've even thought about them. And there are things that God has done in the events of history through the
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Bible, where he deals with individuals and tells them things that are going to happen, events that are contingent on people's actions.
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When we think about even the life of Christ, you know, events, life of Joseph, there's many things that God does and brings together and that he knows about.
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And he speaks forth from the beginning of what is to come to pass.
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And so we would always come back. We ought to always come back from a theological response. And if we don't have that answer, we wanna go back to the word and say, what does the scripture say?
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The simplest way to do something like that is, you know, all of us have these smart tools now, look for knowledge and God as a keyword, find all the verses, and I'm sure you'll find tons of those.
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And then as you're looking at them, I mean, in the old days, we had concordances. We look at those scriptures. We look at all those things, redundant now.
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But, and so that's basically how we do. So you're doing a systematic theology yourself as you pull together these verses in terms of how you're gonna be responding.
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And that's one of the reasons why we do systematic theology is there are real challenges that we face that we may not yet have a systematic or a wholesome response to.
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And not everybody here is gonna be interested in open theism. How many of you really care deeply to find out open theism and respond to it?
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Maybe some of you have friends who are open theists and so you wanna respond to them. For others of you, it's an interesting subject.
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So you wanna academically study. And for many of you, it'd be like, when the time comes, I'll get into that.
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I'm just content that God knows, right? I have something else that's more involved in my life and adventure that God has placed me on.
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And I need to understand this particular area of theology so that I may grow and apply myself and serve the
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Lord in greater measure this year. So why study theology? Firstly, because there's bad theology out there.
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But then there is also a command. Okay, if someone can read Matthew 28, 18 to 20, there is a responsibility that each of you has a
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Christian has, each of us as a Christian has that sometimes we don't remember.
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Whoever has it, if you can just go ahead, Corey. Matthew 28, 18 to 20.
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Now, one of the requirements in that great commission passage that we all have to obey
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God as evangelists in this world is to teach. What is it that we are supposed to teach people that we witness to, who come to faith in Christ, who are maybe young believers or unbelievers who are studying a
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Bible with you? What is it that we are supposed to teach them? Yeah, all that I have commanded you, everything that the scriptures have to say and part of our responsibility in doing that.
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So we all have a role as a teacher in terms of obeying
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Christ today. And each of our spheres in which we will be fulfilling Matthew 28 in 2016 will be different.
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Some of you as parents will be doing that with your children. Some of you as coworkers may have a
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Bible study at your workplace where someone is interested in learning something about the Bible. Some of you within the church may be having discipleships where you are helping one another grow in the knowledge of the word.
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And maybe some of you will just meet some strangers on the street and then start talking to them about the gospel and about the things of God.
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And as I mentioned with apologetics, the better you know the word of God, what the whole
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Bible has to say, the better you are equipped to teach others about Jesus Christ and everything that he has commanded you to teach.
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Now, let me maybe move on to the next section. What are major and minor doctrines?
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Now, obviously, how many of you, can you name some systematic theology books that you are familiar with?
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Some famous books that you've read or you own? Poitras, Grudem, Schaeffer, yeah,
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Geisler, yes. Calvin, what is it?
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Birkhoff, Louis Birkhoff. Yeah, that was my first systematic theology book I bought. What else?
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Packers, okay, I haven't read that one. Is it the small one? Is it, are you talking about Knowing God or does he have another one?
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Oh, okay, good, good. Is that, I'm assuming that's a good one. Hodge is a good one, three volume.
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There's different systematic theology written over time. Now, let me ask this.
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So, we have Calvin, right, or Birkhoff. What's the need for writing other systematic theology?
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Calvin's written a theology, why do we need another one, right? Is there any point in writing another theology today?
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If so, let's talk about it, why? Excellent, and I think, you know, that's, you have to be very careful.
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No matter how good a theologian you might have, I mean, we all love Luther, we all love Calvin. Now they know better than what they knew when they wrote.
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Great men, we learn from them. We stand on their shoulders when we learn, but we never ought to think, you know, this one has it all.
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Excellent, we have new source material as well. Excellent, did someone else wanna add to this?
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I wanna, so, if you remember the definition of systematic theology we use, you know, what does the whole
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Bible say to us today? When you look at Calvin's theology, he is dealing with the challenges of his time and place, you know, especially with Roman Catholicism, with the
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Reformation, here is the challenges that the early, that the church at that time faced, and here are the scriptures that come to bear upon the challenges of that time, and not just to bring the eternal truths, but also bring those eternal truths to bear upon those circumstances that they were facing.
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So, and I think, Charlie, you just put it really well, you know, you have like a MacArthur standing up to face the challenges of these times.
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You have the inerrancy challenges that came up, you know, a few decades ago. So here are the different issues in life that we are facing today, and we wanna bring out those areas of the scriptures that sparkle most brightly upon the times and in the places that God has placed us today.
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And which is why I said, when we're gonna go through this theology, there are gonna be some things where you say, you know what, I know this really well.
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Maybe there are some areas where I need to apply this, things I need to do that I haven't done, but I'm okay.
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And then there may be other areas where your mind just explodes. It's like, you know, I've never considered this, and I can see the real danger that's right outside these doors, and I need to be immersed in these teachings so that I am equipped and prepared to face the challenges, the adventures that are out there.
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So let's go back to major and minor doctrines. You know, is every doctrine in systematic theology of equal importance?
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Are some of them more important than others? If so, on what basis?
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How would we define one area as more important than another, if we should at all?
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Let me ask Carol. Okay, salvific, you know, how do
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I get saved? If someone is wrong on that issue, this could have eternal consequences.
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Okay, so salvation would be a major issue. What else? Oh, okay, all right.
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Yes, knowledge of God. So if you are wrong about who God is, everything else will kind of fall apart.
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These are kind of foundational doctrines and teachings of the word of God that if you have flawed here.
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Okay, so let's just take a few examples. We'll be looking at this a little bit later. Can you talk about someone, some church, or some non -church, some organization that has a false understanding of God, and how we would respond to it?
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So let's take someone who's not a Christian, someone that you're witnessing to, someone, something that's really practical in your life, who would not agree with you on what you have to say about God from the
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Bible. Okay, actually, that's good. You brought it a little closer.
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Maybe we'll start here, and then we'll expand out. So when you look at Pentecostals, except for maybe like oneness
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Pentecostals, most of them would agree on the Trinitarian understanding of who God is,
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God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. So when it comes to issues such as the nature of God, that God is
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Spirit, you would see that they would agree with us on the teaching of who
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God is. But now, where would be the area that the Pentecostals and us, we would differ?
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You mentioned about the Holy Spirit. So what is the role of the Holy Spirit? What are the gifts of the
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Holy Spirit that he gives us today? How are Christians to glorify God in the way we live our life today in terms of dependence upon God and his word, and resolving issues that come in our lives?
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So here are the ways in which we would differ from the Pentecostals. Go ahead.
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Excellent. And I think that's one. Do you wanna add something? The broader?
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And I think you kind of summarized it. These are the consequences of holding on to theology that could, if you have, and I think we talked about this, if your theology will handle your methodology and it'll result in doxology.
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So if your theology is flawed, so for example, if you say, I'm not all
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Pentecostals do this, but if someone says, this is, the canon is not sufficient, you need something in addition to the word of God, the written word of God, and the way in which you are gonna respond to your trials will be different.
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The way in which you respond to God's call in your life will be different. And the way you will either bring honor or dishonor to God will also be different.
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So we need to be remembering that where we begin with our theology will have a direct impact on our sanctification and the way in which we bring honor to God.
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Pastor Steve? Excellent. And I think, so when we talk about major doctrines, these are the things we are talking about.
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There are things that are just foundational that if someone is flawed on this, they can't be a believer.
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They have no hope of salvation. There is no foundation upon which to build. So a Mormon would be a perfect example there.
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Now, we have a lot of areas where Christians can differ with one another. Here we have even charismatics we can disagree on.
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We have covenant theologians and dispensational theologians.
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We have baptisms in terms of where, and again, it doesn't mean that all of these are okay, whatever you believe.
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We believe that the scriptures does teach certain things. This is what, for example, baptism, it has to be a believer's baptism.
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But we have other brothers and sisters in Christ who may disagree on it or have a bad theology on it, which will not necessarily impact their salvation.
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These are not foundational issues. And the big fights of several decades ago was eschatology.
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If you're wrong on pre -trib, pre -mill, whatever, the specific type of rapture, then you are not going to heaven.
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I mean, that's obviously flawed. This is one of those doctrines. The second coming of Christ is central.
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Every Christian ought to believe that Christ is coming back. But in terms of the specifics of how he's coming, you can have differences in the way in which people understand.
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So we have major doctrines, fundamental doctrines, like salvation, the nature of God, who Christ is. If you're flawed there, those are gone.
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There is no hope of salvation. And then there are other just as important doctrines, but these are, we would call them minor because they do not have the same ramifications as if you're flawed on the major ones.
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All right, so with that, I'm gonna just throw a few questions and we'll wrap up for today.
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Now, when I say the word of God, we're gonna be covering scripture next week, but what comes to your mind, just quickly?
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What are the things that come into your mind when I say word of God? Christ, John 1, 1, right?
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In the beginning was the word. What else comes to mind? Scriptures, the
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Bible is called the word of God. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet. Now, when you think of the scriptures, why is the scriptures called the word?
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Why do you think of the word, the Bible as word? Say that again?
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Okay, written words. So God said something that's been written down. Maybe that's part of the word, but word, why do we use the term word?
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Yes, Bill. That's right, it's communication. God is speaking.
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He has communicated what he wants us to know. And then we step back a little bit and this is part of systematic theology.
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I'm just giving you a little primer here. What do we mean by the word? God decrees certain things.
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God speaks to individuals, God decrees, like God said, let there be light. God speaks to individuals in the
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Bible. God speaks to Abraham and says, I'm gonna do something in your life. God speaks through his, okay, now you're all in Hebrews one, speaks through prophets and then his son.
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You have all these various ways. And so when we say the word of God, as a systematic theologian, you should not just settle on one or two.
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Your mind should just go like in those fireworks. Like, okay, I am just reveling in that one term, the word of God.
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Okay, let's pick the next one here. So, how is
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God like us in his being and in mental and moral attributes? I'm just picking the next category. We'll just pick a few from each of these.
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How is God like us in his being and his mental and moral attributes? Personhood, excellent.
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And for those of you who are thinking of evangelism in 2016, this is what I want you to be thinking when I ask you this question.
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Now, so here comes your unbelieving co -worker who says, show me God. Are you making up God just because you're insecure?
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Whatever it is that the question is that you come from. And now, this is not just an academic exercise.
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The answer Corey gave, which is great. This is how God has revealed himself, his nature that we cannot know any other way except that through the word.
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And so now that we understand the being of God, as we fill that out with his attributes, you just mentioned a few of them.
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And as you fill them out and then you say, okay, now I can know as the person and the attribute and the character of God settles upon me, as we are gonna be looking at various scriptures and all of these settle upon me, how is my conception of God personally first?
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So when I'm in prayer, each of you, I'm sure when you conceive of God, you think of one aspect of God in his either in his grandeur, in his transcendence, how he is so majestic far above all of creation and all the universe.
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Or maybe some of you love to always gravitate toward that imminence, the presence of God that would care for this single worthless creature that he would be with you when you pray, that you can actually be in this person, in the presence of this
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God. So all of these attributes, as they start to fill upon your mind and your heart and your soul, and then when you start now communicating to someone who has no concept of God, it becomes a lot easier to say, here is who the
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God who exists. Here's the God whom I worship. How about this one?
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What was Christ's resurrection body like? These are all some questions we'll see later. What do you think Jesus' resurrection body was like?
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What was cool about resurrection? How's that? What is cool about Jesus' resurrection body? Glorified, and that's one of those terms, you know, that glorified glory and the glorified, these are rich terms.
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And we actually mean some things when we use that term. What are some of the things that you can think of? In what ways was the glorified body different than the body he had before his death?
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Not bound by time or space, okay? Okay, so here are some physical characteristics, and then there are some spiritual characteristics, metaphysical characteristics, things that are all just so out of this world, if you will, you know, practically, where we just can't comprehend them, but God gives us this vision of what the glorified body for us will also look like, because Jesus is the first fruits.
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And then I have this list, order of salvation. This is one of those things I always love talking about, but adoption, okay, let me just throw this out just for fun.
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Many of you have heard ordo salutis. Why would you put adoption after regeneration?
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Should you put adoption after regeneration in ordo salutis? Who are these crazy guys who came up with this list anyway?
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So, you know, these are good, I mean, the thing is there is a reason this is the way it is. And for us to just reflect upon this, yes,
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I am adopted as a child of God. What does that mean? And I think I was talking to, yeah, actually one of you earlier this week, and the term adoption has connotations in certain cultures that may be difficult for some
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Christians to say, you know, I'm actually adopted. Whereas many of us would just rejoice on the concept of adoption.
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And so, you know, we have to be careful, are we exegeting the meaning and the meaning of the term adoption from the text, are we putting something in?
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And then what does this mean? And of course, just to not leave you hanging there, the order of solution, order of salvation there is not really a chronological one.
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It's a more of a logical order that is put in place where it takes all the different scripture texts and then says, you know, what are the things that God does in our lives as he makes us his child?
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Means of grace, we've actually had a Sunday school here. And then maybe the last one here, what is heaven?
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Is it a place? You know, the number of people who have not wanted to answer it as a place.
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And, you know, what is the justifications we have for calling heaven a place rather than some spiritual magic entity?
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You know, right? I mean, that's what most people would like us to think of heaven to be.
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And once again, it's all gonna be drawing from the scriptures to say, you know, do I have a basis for believing what
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I believe? Many of us here will have the right beliefs, but we wanna make sure that we understand why we hold on to them and then how we will live them out in our life.
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So my challenge for you in this time would be, don't take this as a time where you can bring your questions.
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So the next few weeks, we're gonna be looking at the word of God. Bring questions that you have.
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If something is unclear, if something doesn't make sense, ah, that's the word
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I was looking for. You know, sometimes when you have a teacher up here, you don't wanna embarrass him in front of the whole class.
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It's like, oh, come on, you know, that guy doesn't know the answer. And the last thing I wanna do is to make him look silly. Please don't feel that kind toward me.
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It's okay if I don't know the answer. I'll tell you right now, I probably won't know 25 % of the questions, hopefully, that hopefully only that little, but I probably won't know all the answers that to the questions you have, but ask those questions because only then we will be able to dig deeper, find the reasons for why we believe what we believe and how that must have a practical implication in our life.
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Because I think the reason theology doesn't impact our methodology in a lot of cases is this, because we can see maybe from a distance that what is said is true.
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Maybe some of you here are Calvinists, but push comes to shove, you may not be able to defend why you're a
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Calvinist. And if you don't really see from the scripture, you will find it very hard to live methodologically like a
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Calvinist. You'll tend to fall back on Arminianism. Maybe some of you here have other theologies that you have struggled with in terms of the nature of God, who
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God is. Maybe the role of the Holy Spirit, how does God equip you for ministry today?
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And the more we grasp theology, the word of God and what it says about the truths of God, for you today, the way you live will not just be reflecting that theology, but that will also bring glory to God.
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So that's my desire for this adventures. So starting next week, we'll actually get into a subject and then we will dig into it.
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My email should be on the bulletin. So if anyone has questions, send them to me upfront after class today, and I'll try to incorporate them.
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And so today was just an intro, but starting next week, I'll give you handouts and you can actually collect them.
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And then whenever we are done, you'll have a little handout of systematic theology. Any questions or comments before we close?
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All right, let me pray. Dear God, our Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord, for this new year that you've given us, for this new life that you've given us in Jesus Christ.
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We thank you for your word through which you have spoken to us. Once for all through your son.
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And Lord, this morning, we ask you that you would be glorified and you would be honored in our worship this morning as your word is proclaimed, as your word is read, and as we sing with heart, soul, mind, and strength to honor you for who you are and what you've done.